You know all those cool on-screen graphics in movies like Iron Man, The Hunger Games, and Robo Cop? Well, those are made by someone, and that someone could be you. Designers who create Fictional User Interfaces (FUI) help directors communicate important plot points with awesome visuals that are way more entertaining for the audience than ham-fisted voiceover.
Get Started
If you’ve done much Motion Graphics work, or even 2D user interface design, you’re already off to a good start. We’ve created and compiled a number of great tutorials, tools, and presets that will help you take those skills and create some truly fantastic user interfaces.
The Perception Guide to FUI
There’s no better place to start than right here. You’ll be astounded by how quickly this team of incredibly talented artists is able to mock up and deliver new UI concepts. At the end of this Matrix-style brain dump, you might find yourself saying “I know FUI” with a look of wonder in your eyes.
Get Inspired
Now that you’ve got some key skills built up, you can graduate onto high-level production breakdowns. These presentations recorded at the NAB and SIGGRAPH conferences show some of the best artists in the industry sharing their inspirations, tips, and techniques. This is great lunch-time viewing.
Siggraph 2015 Rewind - Cantina Creative: Cinema 4D VFX for Avengers: Age of Ultron & Need for Speed
Alan Torres and Stephen Morton demonstrate how Cantina Creative used Cinema 4D in visual effects for Avengers: Age of Ultron and Need for Speed.
NAB 2015 Rewind - Robyn Haddow: Breakdown of FUI Shots for the Flash and Arrow
Robyn Haddow shows how she and Scarab Digital use Cinema 4D’s fast workflow to create fantasy user interfaces within the quick turnaround of episodic TV for CW’s The Flash and Arrow.
Siggraph 2014 Rewind - Lorcan O'Shanahan, Day 02: Enders Game Interface Design and Mograph Magic
In this presentation, Lorcan O’Shanahan demonstrates techniques he used in creating HUD and screen elements for Ender’s Game.
Siggraph 2016 Rewind - Nik Hill: Designing and Modeling 3D Assets in C4D
Territory Studio of London has created fantasy UI for films like Avengers: Age of Ultron and The Martian as well as outstanding motion graphics for brand promotion. Nik Hill shares some Cinema 4D modeling and rendering techniques used by Territory to create the X-Ray title sequence for Red Giant Films’ Go Bag.
Get Equipped
CV-Artsmart
Long before you picked up Cinema 4D, you were probably doing design work in Adobe Illustrator. There’s even a good chance, you feel like you do your fastest work there. Well, our very own Rick Barrett created this excellent Illustrator Import Plugin which lets you quickly bash out ideas in illustrator and then turn them into animated UI elements in Cinema 4D.
CV-Import Image As
Sort of like ArtSmart for image files - easily import bitmap images as planes. You can even explode photoshop files into multi-layered files easily animated with Cinema 4D’s Mograph toolset
Dive Deep
Motion Tracking & Object Tracking inside Cinema 4D
Designing the graphics, and then animating, aren’t exactly the easy part - but they’re all for nothing if they don’t look like they truly exist in the world of the film. In this series, Thanassis Pozantzis walks you through the process of shooting footage and tracking it so that you can seamlessly integrate your FUI elements into the world in a way that allows on-screen characters to interact with them.